


The Worm Ourobóros

by billspilledquill



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Mind Bond, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Scars, Slow Burn, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25117900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: Potter’s dying. Draco Malfoy never wanted to have anything to do with it.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Kudos: 12





	The Worm Ourobóros

_The territory encompassed by the coil of the serpent was often understood to be the entire earth, world, or cosmos, vague terms that originally connotated no more than the simple concept of “all things known or seen”. By encircling the earth, the snake effectively supported and protected it._

_\- The Ourobóros as an Auroral Phenomenon_

_I bent right around myself, I was encircled in my coils;_

_One who made a place for himself in the midst of his coils,_

_His utterance was what came forth from his own mouth._

_\- The Coffin Texts: 321, trans. R. T. Rundle Clark_

Ominous are the shadows. Arms dip low and heads down, Draco follows. 

The windows filter through; outside the paned and weeded windows are leaves conspiring in circles. Inside are the long tables, the dark murmurs, and a man that vows for the Dark to sweep at his feet. The magic, pliant and purple, mingles with gurgling voices of torture, twisting and shaking like leaves, circling; magic knows what it sees. 

The Dark Lord calls it a handsome manor house. It plunges in the darkness at the end of the straight drive, lights dimming in the diamond-paned downstairs windows. A fountain plays beyond the hedge, the dark garden spewing weeds. The large hallway trails down a Persian rug with eyes of the pale-faced portraits on the walls following shadows. 

The rustles of runes croak and crackle the laughter of the past. Draco remembers the history lessons Father gave him: Armand Malfoy, cunning and devious, gains prime land in Wiltshire by seizing Muggle landowners, offering magical services to the Norman King. Ten centuries later and the land is seized again. _What is it about my presence in your home that displeases you, Lucius?_ The past shifts— _nothing, my Lord, nothing_ — callous and distant. Power proves to be eternal; they have invented nothing in following power. 

The ceiling dangles, trying to hold itself together. It swings; swift and sweet like magic flowing in his veins. The cries and the curtains sweep up, and the shadow creeps, assuming and assessing, and Draco thinks, _home_. 

_Look closer, Draco_ , it beckons.

He flexes his hand, wand clenched tight. Muggles defend themselves from Malfoys’ attempt at annexation; Armand Malfoy flickering his wand in the service of the invader King. Draco must have anger somewhere, beneath the furnishing fear. Annexation is not far and retribution is near.   
  


*

There is a time and place to think, to muse over with detachment. There are the Christmas’ gifts, the dotting smiles, and the loving parents. The scathing remarks— _I do feel so sorry_ _for all those people who have to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas because they’re not wanted at home;_ the friends with which he made them, and the carefree wind carrying him to the air in a swoop. Sometimes he thinks he had it too easy. Sometimes he thinks, _good_. Sometimes Draco looks at Harry Potter and thinks, _hero_. 

Draco gives a quick glance and strolls in. Laughter rings in the Great Hall. Draco dusts off dust with the back of his hand. He will think about glory, and war, and the glory of war. He will think about who to hex under his breath, who to shame, who to grab by the shoulder and say, _that’s an ugly tie you’ve got, does your Mommy know?_ The Hufflepuff boy cried; his mother died a month in the latest development of an Auror mission. Words work like magic, flowing and scant with breath. Potter catches Longbottom’s Remembrall with a firm grip and a fierce grin. In Harry Potter’s story he looks; in his story he sees. 

In the Great Hall, the first year Gryffindors huddle together, drawn together like flickers of flame to a fire, forming a mass of red, disaffirmed ball. In the middle is the hero of the story. The banter does not stop for anyone’s expense. Draco tilts his head, short of sulking. A ghost sweeps the green banner above when he comes to sit— it lifts and resumes its shape; nothing is depended by a simple movement, by simple ripples against the wind. 

The Great Hall stuffs itself with chatter. It echoes loud and it echoes nothing. At the Slytherin table he leans over to Parkinson, mouthing something cruel, something that makes sense, something that fits. Zabini returns something equally damning. Draco follows his path and is cruel and beams with pride of a past that was good and glorious. 

Draco is an eleven-year-old storyteller with a kind disregard to the truth. He cranes his head over to the Gryffindor table, catching another’s eyes, looking, narrowing. Ron Weasley scowls when he notices him, his cheeks as bright as his hair, mouthing, _weak_ , whispering, _coward_. He challenges Harry Potter in a duel at midnight. He loses; they get detention. 

Draco stares at the white of the ceiling in his room. It closes in.   
  


*

The weather in Wiltshire is light with rain and hasn’t stirred for days. There is everywhere to see in his head and all Draco sees is Wiltshire and the tall manor embedded with Doric columns and the Malfoy coast of arms. Thunder strikes light into the building and pales the windows the same way as the sun, but the sun hasn’t yet come. 

The maps write Britain as an island, soul-bound in the middle of the ocean, isolated by the tides and the waves. When Draco thinks of Britain he thinks not of the land, tattered and secluded by untidy winds and unruly storms— the rocks hitting against wet sand, deserted and alone— Draco closes his eyes and remembers a Britain and a Wiltshire, and the world becomes his. The end of the world; the end of the wild. Wilshire borders with Hampshire and Dorset, the maps write, and so it was, and so it shall be, but Draco remembers Wiltshire as his own, and the world obeys for a moment and remembers why and how it could have been his.

In Wiltshire, in the manor, in the left corner of Mother’s drawer, there is a handprint he made with paint at age three. The paper crinkles at the edges, yellow with age. She glances at it from time to time. 

‘It remembers me that you’re not only growing up,’ she explains. ‘You’re also growing away.’ 

‘This is a handprint, not my hand,’ says Draco. 

‘We’re made of memories,’ says Narcissa, her fingers trailing on the paper. ‘They are strong. They mislead. This is not your hand.’ The shadow dawns at night and licks her shoes. She looks down, observing the shadow he casted momentarily before fading away. ‘This is not you.’

Draco wonders if he is what she is to him, then. Quiet nights at the Malfoy Manor; soothing hand running over hair. If he is easy to differentiate; if everything is only stories. 

In his first Charms class, Draco practices the basic wand movements: right, left, up, down. Swish and flick; it moves and shifts; some sparks fly up. Suddenly the entire class shifts, then everyone has sparks flying up as his own disappears. Magic, in its rules and restrictions, has desires. Draco looks and does not bother naming the feeling searing in his chest. 

To be exceptional. To be great, never mind good — is the end for which he was born. Draco steps down the stairs and looks. This is the first year and this is Harry Potter, opposite him from the complicated stairs; Draco looks down at him, standing there, aloof, apathetic, understanding that the world belongs on a single axis, and shifts accordingly. 

‘Oh, what did I say about whiny fat babies?’ Pansy declares loudly, her face screwing in disgust. ‘They grow up so fast!’ 

‘And troll-faced, too,’ Draco adds. ‘Now I understand why you keep him around, Potter.’

Red with fat, ugly tears, Longbottom dares to glance at them once before scurrying away. Potter glowers and balls his fist as he exits. The stairs obey; they part ways. Sparks fly up, fluttering into thin air, then nothing else but a shudder of what occurred. 

This is not new and nothing is. There was a war; there will be another. There was a side, a winning side, and there will be another. A spark, gone to the winds, carries memories that children could not bury. Draco laughs at a Ravenclaw; Goyle steals her book. There is triumph, and then, sparks fly up, and everything goes. 

They write lines during their detentions and laugh over the impossibility of the situation. _I must obey school rules_ , they write each on their own as their quills make ink splashes all over the scrawled inches of text and their tumbling laughter. They bond over punishments and sneer in hallways. They laugh and hate in sync, or so this story goes. 

Draco stretches his arms as his eyes hurt from staring at the white that closes in ever so slowly, with the night dawning in. In the white room he stays in, Wiltshire thunders its lightning and glowers like a lion.   
  


*

The long and ornate hall is full of silent people. Faces illuminate from a roasting fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gilded mirror. The cries don’t stop, but Draco hears it. _Is this him?_ He hears it too much, this name; in his head, in the past, at home. Draco hears the name and sees it everywhere reflected. He wishes to Vanish it. Break the bones, pluck the soul, devour it whole. _Is this him?_

Draco tells Father that he can’t be sure. 

_Look closer, Draco_ , he beckons.

Father promises glory. Glory of war: Harry Potter, swollen faced with broken glasses, bloody and bland, is the golden prize. Draco stares at the broken bits of glasses on the floor. Fear replaces envy; no anger bypasses tender curiosity, the overwhelming fear _._ Draco wishes to be uncomplicated, to beat Harry Potter unconscious, tear every ligaments, squeeze the blood and mar his face; to place him to the light until there is only a simple piece of soul, like a feather, stale and steep; to play the role. Father beckons. He looks closer. 

_Well, Draco? Is it? Is it Harry Potter?_

Father’s hair dries bloody. Potter’s eyes follow; they stay taunt. There is a Remembrall tossed in the air, waiting. It waits for Potter to catch it with a firm grip and a plastered grin. The world is Harry Potter’s, wide and willing for the taking, a Golden Snitch to be swallowed whole, and Draco waits for him to shatter into pieces and flutter into nothingness.

Draco does what he does best. Ron Weasley grunts out a terrible, animalistic noise and stands shaking, and Draco waits. 

Potter looks. This is not new. There is a determination in the way he folds himself and pride in the making. Magic shelters him; magic has always listened to power. Something reckless in Draco wants to ask why. Do you think you can triumph? It demands, magic curling in and around the body, bright and blinding. Do I want you to triumph? 

‘I can’t be sure,’ he says. Lucius Malfoy’s pale face turns to ash. The velvet curtain of the Manor surges, as if by magic, casts shadows on faces, only to leave Potter’s distorted visage plain to the light. Outside, leaves conspire in circles. Inside, Draco sees the ceiling, white and pale, his arms flatten out the sheets and he cannot sleep. 

*

Draco tells stories. It colours bright and belongs to the innocence of childhood; it strikes the string of remembrance of all the times he jabbed and pushed. The past shifts and shapes itself like a dream, repeats and keeps repeating.

Mostly Draco dwells there unnoticed. A traveller’s profile; a clock’s axis. It flickers golden like it once was, back to the thrill of having his fingers whisper against pale wings of a Snitch. They are stories; the world’s full of them.

‘The Order is preparing an attack,’ says Nott. ‘There is rumour of a skirmish down the south. Some believed that we might catch him, even. That skinny little rat wouldn’t know what caught him—‘ Nott’s chest puffs with pride. ‘Surely you have heard, little Malfoy? Did the little snake finally shed its little skin and grow up just like his father?’ 

‘The Order is a mess,’ Draco says, listening to the grass shuffle against the wind. The edges of it form a S, trembling when it moves. The manor has always been fond of creatures, Draco thinks, remembering the peacock. ‘So I have heard. What is it to you?’ 

Nott tuts disapprovingly. ‘Don’t take it so personally, little Malfoy. No one ever tells you anything of importance.’ 

Draco smooths the taunt corners of his cloak. ‘But they told you,’ he says. ‘Now that is news worthy of our ears. Humility is best served cold, Theodore. Should I allow you to boast, do it quickly.’ 

He laughs. ‘Oh, but I am,’ Nott says. ‘I am enjoying the constipated look on your face alright.’ 

A hiss pierces softly through; the head of a garter snake rises above the grass and sways its head. Nott laughs harder. He is in such a good mood that he has lost his usual greyish tint since the war started. ‘You know what a Thamnophis is, Malfoy?’ Nott grins, flashing his teeth. ‘Harmless, defensive, picturesque… it brands itself colourful in order to be perceived as venomous.’ 

‘What do we need to prepare for the rumoured attack?’ Draco asks. The snake’s slit eyes stare at him; the wind shifts and grows stronger. 

‘I am not blind,’ Nott continues, his mouth curling into a smirk. ‘You are envious; you’re weak. You let emotions win you over. You’re mad every time his name is mentioned. Mad boy; poor boy,’ he coos. ‘Born with fame, best of his year, considered a worthy component by the Dark Lord himself, all the while you strut and fret behind his shadow and shudder when you are ordered to. Weak little snake… the littlest Malfoy…’

‘We are all Dark Lord’s servants,’ Draco says. 

‘Followers,’ Nott corrects. 

‘Glorified words for glorified means,’ he says. He points at the map, ‘we must employ more wizards down the southern area if the rumour of an Order attack stands true. It’s our weakest point.’

‘You’ve always wanted to be him,’ Nott wonders with a glint in his eyes. ‘You always wanted to be better than him.’ 

The fountain spews leaves. Nott holds one between his fingers. The dead leaf is riddled with holes, a damp corpse. The snake has disappeared, but the winds pick up their pace. Nott crosses his arms; there is a contemplative silence. 

‘You must understand that we are what we ought to be, not what we are. We shed our skin; the excess, the unnecessary parts. You have been quite a bother lately. The Dark Lord will not allow your inaction for long.’ 

‘I belong here,’ Draco says. ‘I am equal to you. You were the only ones in that rotten school that was worth something. I am not going anywhere.’

The garden is dark; there stirs the northern wind. Nott leans on the base of the fountain and smiles for the fist time. 

‘That’s right, Draco,’ Nott says with a sudden warmth, his face half-shadowing his wayward hair. ‘We cheat death; we seek fame. We devour our own tails,’ Nott says as he demonstrates heartily, his finger circling the air. ‘The Dark Lord is eternal.’

Amidst the whispers of long, elongated hallways and shelves of the manor’s silent library, Draco tells himself a story about Harry Potter. 

The past remembers; it clears the mist and shifts uptight, unlike a dream. Harry Potter appears down the lane with perfect clarity; his figure casting shadows while the sun streams through the window. Draco tells stories after stories, mind swirling with possibilities of a lost dream: shaking hands with Harry Potter, eating with him at the Great Hall, playing Quidditch with him during breaks, sneaking out after dark for innocuous reasons. Always ideal, always clear, Draco seizes it and his mind wanders to where it began.

In this story Potter wins. His hair is wild, feral; Harry Potter is hell-bent and victorious. Draco closes his eyes and grants himself stories. 

After the detentions Draco invites him to a match of Quidditch and loses. The next day he wins. The other day he did not. Days go on unbothered by victory and defeat, only sparks fly up, the tight grip to the broom and the wind cutting their cheeks, and everything goes.

‘The wind rises,’ says Draco. The white room he stays in has no windows.   
  


*

The bird dies in the Vanishing Cabinet, its wings broken, a slash of bone white and jarring poking through. Draco muses over the white feather, pinched between his trembling fingertips. It seems to Draco that fulfilling his role must be the end for which he was born; this bird, this Cabinet, him. There is nothing to defy, there is everything to fulfill. The feather falls without a sound. Draco obeys. 

The Manor seems far away, now. Father’s words ring loud in his ears to the point he cannot make out the words. He has a mission to accomplish. He is destined on a side of war waiting to erupt. He is destined. He is chosen. 

He throws a hex. The sparks fly up— and hit the bottom of the bathroom stall, shimmering only to die on the floor, then disappearing as a counter-hex strikes, shrill in the air, determined in its purpose. Draco ducks and sees the angry red sparks beaming on the surface floor, quieting the ragged breathing and the rustlings of clothes. 

Draco shivers. Moaning Myrtle, her form pale and hunched, professes a glint in her dead eyes. He has made fun of her plenty during first year, about ghosts in general. ‘I can help you,’ she says. 

He points his wand to the shadow and hits.

The shattered mirror reflecting eyes and a confident foot, the soft sound resuming in the shuffle of a school robe. Footsteps trail and stop. Harry Potter looks like the one in his stories: dangerous, unblemished, untouched by the world, ready to laugh with him and start a game of Quidditch. 

Draco looks at the mirror, a slant reflection of Harry Potter. He thinks, _hero_. 

He throws another and another in retaliation. The bathroom clatters with cries. 

For a moment there is a desperate thrill that he clings unto, a normalcy that he has forgotten starting the year. The fuel of torture, of pain, seeing Potter engaging in a fight, not an ounce of morality left in between. Instruments of war; promises of glory; rivalry, the unraveling of pure, unadulterated hatred— they are at war with each other before everything else. Chosen; the word is heavy, welcomed. Draco has a role. He wants to put it in a Vanishing Cabinet and let it rot to death; he wants to pick it like a feather and blows it a soft whisper. He wants to be Harry Potter. He wants to win.

He levels his wand, the word spilling out of his mouth exactly like a curse. Before he finishes, there is another voice, another spell, and he sees red, dotting sparks until there is nothing else to see. Pain comes, understanding that with destruction comes creation. Laws of magic; rules of the cosmos. 

Draco stares on at the blank slate of white over white. The contour of a handprint painted white across pale gold. 

*

Mother makes tea by herself now; her hands slipping on the handle; dots of tea splatter on the table where neither decide to notice. The room is tidy and bland, the white walls tearing at the seams. She says house arrest is better than nothing; Draco says it is the best that they can have, and the rest goes unsaid. He aligns the spoon with the cup, staring at the swirl of milk as it stirs. 

‘Your Father sends his wishes,’ she says.

‘I missed you, Mother.’ 

‘Your Father misses you. He hopes to see you.’ 

Draco opens the jar that is sitting mindlessly on the white table. ‘Would you like some sugar?’ 

Her drink is left steaming; maybe she believes it poisoned, maybe she knows that everything served here is worthless. 

She shakes her head. ‘Your Father, Draco.’ 

‘I know,’ Draco says. Their time is scarce and Draco ought to say something. ‘Father and I made a promise. He shan’t worry about me.’ 

Narcissa Malfoy sips her tea and furrows her brows. 

‘It tastes foul,’ declares Draco. Narcissa dips her head; a trail of white hair slips from her tight bun. 

‘I promised him that I won’t die,’ says Draco then. ‘He promised me the same.’

She stirs her tea, her fingers matching the color of the spoon. ‘Nothing that is created can be destroyed,’ she says. ‘Do you know what that means, my dear?’

‘First magical theory,’ answers Draco dutifully. ‘The cosmic rules; any magical textbook has it etched across the quote bar.’ 

She nods. ‘Foolish people have sought immortality. They don’t know that we cannot die. Not the way they think,’ says Narcissa. ‘They have blasphemed. They ruled over Death by wanting to become Death. Lucius knows. He has rules set up for you; he has ambitions for you that you took for your own. Never once you ventured to the unknown, never once you were foolish. You can’t start disappointing him now, Draco.’ 

The milk paints the tea brown, gone without any trace of white. Potions work like that, Draco thinks. Potions. People. Uniformity. Draco makes a face; the tea is vile. 

‘Everything dies,’ she continues. Her hair tickles his cheek when her arms come to tighten around his shoulders. ‘But no one gets to be Death, Draco, no one gets to be dead. We only keep dying, and living is a role just as admirable.’ She blows on the slow rise of steam. ’We shall live before then.’ 

Their embrace is quick; his knees bending when he stands to meet her in the middle. They pretend an intimacy that makes sense. Usually Father would cover his long limbs over, a gesture turned to habit. Her hovering figure, dark, cloaked, shakes him with the scent of the past and envelops him whole. 

‘I want you to,’ Draco says. ‘It was all I wanted. It was all I did, all I fought for.’ 

Narcissa rests her lips on his forehead. The windowless room stagnates and the air is stale. Draco supposes that this could be a story worth telling: a mother’s love and a mother’s grief, encapsulated by a single gesture; a single sacrifice.

‘I love you.’ She has never been afraid to say it. ‘I love you more than anything in this world,’ she says.

Draco sits down; stills his fingers on the seam of the cup. Warmth seeps through. Mother stands straight, quiet when the guard comes to escort her out with a shove. ‘We can go back.’ He knows she hears him, but she doesn’t turn her head. ‘If we can’t move forward, why shouldn’t we move back?’

‘You’ll have to come home,’ says Narcissa. 

The young guard stares with a blank look. Mother is gone without another word. The tea stays cold. 

*

Draco goes back. At the end of the battle Father comes to him as they watch everything crumble to the ground. The Malfoys huddle together, standing before Hogwarts’ grounds. Mother holds Draco’s hand and says, ‘you did well, you did very well.’ 

Hogwarts stands tall; the smoke of destruction sinks and slithers like a snake and ashen the faces. 

‘You knew it was him,’ Father says, his chin up; his bloodied lips smear his face. ‘You recognized him.’ 

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You lied to me.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You cost us our honor, pride, and, ultimately, the Dark Lord’s life,’ he says. The voice trails, looking at the destruction. 

Draco nods; the sky clears the dust and the magic fades to nothing. He supposes they should have set up a plan to flee, to save themselves. _Move_. But he does not move, nor does Father. The foot stairs of Hogwarts are broken at the tip. The shadows come and go; they do not move. 

‘What will happen to you?’ Draco asks when there is no point at denying the obvious. ‘Will I see you again?’

Draco goes back; the bloodied hair, the begging. For a brief moment he wondered whether it is brave to stand here, on the enemy’s grounds, talking idly about the future. Whether it is nobler to suffer, to soar like a bird, to fly; to run. The Malfoys can run away; they can go back. They can go anywhere and Draco will follow like a shadow. 

‘Son,’ Father begins, Draco feels his hands tremble, sweat-drenched; relieved when the answer does not come. Half-questioned, half-answered, Lucius stays a father the same way Draco stays a son. 

Father understands the necessity of affection; the possibility of comfort, of manipulation. But a broken hug will not save a child’s life, nor will meaningless words rescue those who have fallen short. It is power, he tells Draco, that fulfills and understands. And so they are broken, and so they have fallen short, and so Father cannot speak.

‘You did well, Draco,’ Mother repeats, mumbling it like spell. ‘You did so well.’ A gentle white breeze, almost rising, cuts his cheek as Draco remembers chaos: white, then pale gold, then nothing at all. 

*

Harry Potter looks like a child again, small, scrawny, equipped with nothing but bent glasses and a vague sense of the weight of his name. A slight bruise appears at the base of his neck, yellow and fading; Potter is a war that Draco remembers. He is a story that belongs in another story, in a bigger epic.

‘Thank you for letting her go,’ says Draco in a rush when he first hears the door creak. ‘You saved her.’ 

‘She saved me,’ says Potter, shaking scent off his cloak. ‘Oh no.’ He scrunches his nose, squinting at the white table. ‘There’s tea,’ he laments.

The room is small and has too little air. Potter’s hands are fumbling with the tea bag. _I must not tell lies_ , carves in the back of his hand; small, white scars scatter all around the words.

‘This is Dark,’ Draco comments.

Potter takes the chance to put down his cup without drinking it. ‘You would think that with a name like the bloody Blood Quill it must be rainbow magic, but no, it is Dark. Pity, that.’

‘Once it is in place, you’ll have to obey to its words.’

Potter threads his hand on his hair and trails to his scar. ‘Wonder how that feels,’ Potter says. ‘A scar that determines your every actions. Novel idea.’ 

‘Yes,’ says Draco, thinking of the one that cut him open. ‘I would think so.’

‘So I can’t lie,’ Potter says after a pause. ‘Well, that’s a shame. Wasn’t I a spectacular liar before.’

‘It helps that you have a death wish,’ Draco says. ‘Did you often indulge in self-discipline as such?’

Potter shifts from foot to foot under the table. ‘It’s Umbridge,’ he explains. ‘Courtesy of a detention.’

‘By craving letters on skin,’ Draco suggests. 

‘Writing lines on paper.’

‘Did you tell lies?’ Draco asks. 

Potter looks up. He seems to have forgotten who he is speaking with. ‘I don’t know,’ Potter says. Magic curls and hums against the words. The cup trembles under the attention. 

Potter nods weakly, paying no mind. He shakes his head. His face shadows, the air of a man possessed. 

‘Potter?’ 

‘I don’t know—'

The fumbling starts the cup; it shatters on the floor. Magic breaks into a flow and Draco’s blood sings. The guard frowns but does not move; none of them do.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ he mumbles, then sharply, he looks up. ‘I— Did you tell the truth?’ Potter asks. Tea drips from his hands as they shake. 

The image of Harry Potter and the Remembrall starts him awake, a boy’s wide grin startling to memory with a deceptive delicacy. Feeling oddly trapped, Draco doesn’t answer.

‘Tell me something true, then,’ Potter stands up, his shoulders between his ears.

‘Well,’ says Draco, examining the cup; the way Potter is already moving to the door. ‘The tea is appalling. Probably the worse I have ever had the displeasure to taste.’ 

The ridges of his glasses gleam; light has filtered in. ‘Yeah,’ says Potter. He looks grateful. ‘Yeah. Okay.’

Light is now upon him, shadowing half of Potter’s face. Light is on his scar, and small, white wounds dribbling across his cheeks and exposed forearm. Harry Potter is the cracking bone after an aching fight. There are no windows in this room, and the walls close in, stark and blindingly white. Draco cleans the cup and takes up the rest; Potter grabs his cloak but does not put in on. He leaves promptly, cloak billowing; magic humming contently behind.

*

Harry Potter shatters the Remembrall, its pieces flashing red before they fall unceremoniously on the ground, pieces scattered all over. He doesn’t get promoted to the Quidditch team, isn’t the youngest Seeker of the century. Draco has not failed to shame Harry Potter’s attempt at heroics; in this story he succeeds. It plays in his head that night, the walls darkening, shimmering, clean like the pale wings of a Snitch. 

Draco bullies him over the incident. Hear, hear; there is a remarkable, world-famous boy that fails to prove himself during his first flying test; expectations that Draco meets where Harry Potter does not. The Boy-Who-Lived, small and skeleton-like, in readiness for a meal, failing to save something. A betrayal to his name, daunting like the gaze of fingers against the curve of the ball, soft and knowing like fallen pieces against green sprouts of grass.

 _‘_ You failed,’ Draco says to him, though he does not feel triumph. _‘_ I haven’t.’

Harry Potter is standing there, red and gold and a poor, first-year broom in hand with the sun behind him. He looks malnourished, he looks like the strongest person in the whole wide world. ‘I cannot save everyone,’ he hears him say _. ‘_ And you cannot fail everything. _’_

The voice sounds old and foreign, unfit for a child. At night, Draco sees nothing but white walls, and the echoing voices of an invented past resounding within. 

*

’You deserved what you got,’ the guard lets out with a quiver, as if surprised by his own bravery. The day has turned into another day as unceremonious as the next. He stays in his room while the guard stays in another. The boy has grown quite tired of not having anyone to talk to, and boredom makes him talk. ‘You should be ashamed,’ the boy adds weakly.

‘I don’t know,’ says Draco. ‘Is your mother ashamed of you for staying with a Death Eater because you can’t find any decent job aside from a post as a petty guard with no apparent mouth filter? Rolling in her grave, maybe. She is as dead as I remember her to be.’

The boy grits his teeth; Draco stays and stares.

‘I can’t believe it! You—‘ he gawks, flushed and trembling— ‘you’re completely— _utterly_ shameless! You would think the war would have taught you decency… and manners!’ 

Draco has recognized the boy he had insulted in first year. A Hufflepuff, he believes, with eyes big as saucers when he is about to cry. 

‘The war teaches nothing,’ says Draco calmly. ‘War only kills; it only destroys. I have done all that. You of all people should know what I am capable of,’ he pauses, ‘little Kilvan, isn’t it?’

The boy turns red. ‘Don’t call me that! I won’t tolerate it, I won’t. How dare you, you filthy—‘

‘Little Death Eater? Littlest Malfoy, surely that will work,’ supplies Draco. ‘An insult should be given with confidence. Be poised. There you go. Try again.’

Kilvan Kenneth, a once-Hufflepuff with an ugly wrapped tie, flees to the other room with his big, saucer eyes. His mother is an Auror that died in a mission against evil. It is only fitting, Draco thinks, that he remembers.

*

Draco picks up the pieces. Two weeks, two visits from Mother, and all that is eventful is condensed in broken pieces of a tea cup, a jarring sight on his nightstand. No one else has visited. Draco sits on the left side of his bed with the hope of falling asleep and listens for the screams. 

It isn’t hard; it isn’t easy. There is a growing sense that he is living and not quite. He toys with a piece of the broken cup and clutches it tight into a fist. He looks at the broken patterns of the shard and examines the slight off-coloured rubs after holding them for too long, staring and caressing them pristine clean. 

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Mother says. ‘Do not worry about me.’ 

Draco feels her hand down his head, a clear attempt for comfort. He bows, remembering. _Is it? Is it him?_

‘I won’t see you again,’ Draco says. ‘I know. Exile for war criminals is for life.’

‘Mr. Potter vouched for me.’

I know, Draco wants to say. Or else it wouldn’t be exile. 

‘French weather is quite pleasant,’ Narcissa says. ‘You ought to practice your French more, Draco. You used to be fluent in the past.’

He used to do a lot of things in the past. ‘I have no interest in it, Mother.’

Her fingers hover over his. ‘France has a rich culture, Draco. You ought to expand your vision. Purebloods were once prominent in the French nobility, some even landing themselves as rulers and Kings. The Capets were important allies.’

Draco ignores the frown on the guard’s face, deciding whether or not to interfere. The mention of the Malfoys has disturbed him, Draco thinks. ‘What happened to them?’ He asks. 

Mother looks mildly displeased. ‘You really ought to learn, Draco. Did you read the books I brought you?’

‘Father confiscated them,’ he says. This time, the guard comes forward to put a halt to the conversation, but he continues, ‘we should never mingle with Muggles. It corrupts our traditions.’

The guard growls impatiently. It sounds suspiciously like whining.

‘They were gifts, Draco,’ Narcissa says, indignant. ‘It is part of our history.’

‘I wasn’t encouraged to. I don’t like doing anything Father doesn’t like,’ he says. The guard starts to take her away by the elbow, dragging her rudely to the exit. She turns, her body stiff. Her eyes soften when they meet his.

‘So you’re not coming home, then,’ she says. 

‘Not France, no,’ he says quickly, heart at his throat. ‘At Christmas you gave me books, of course. You always did. I listened. I always listen, you know I do. It was Christmas. I was seven. I remember; you know that, Mother.’

She knows. ‘You should forget,’ she says. ‘Some things aren’t meant to be remembered, to be pitied. The dead live off from the spirits that return. I have no desire for the past, nor should you.’

His heart flutters; a Snitch’s wings. ‘I’m sorry. I wish it, Mother.’

‘You have made a choice to live,’ she says imperiously. ‘You have no choice but to continue. Forward, if possible. Finish, if you can. There’s an end to look for, Draco. You need to find yours..’

Continue, Draco thinks, slipping into his pocket to touch a shard of broken cup. The Dark Lord’s commands, his stories; scattered and unfinished in the forms of mulled-over pieces. From beginning to end, Draco has never finished anything. 

There are rules. Nothing can be destroyed after creation. Draco slips into his pocket, grasping blindly at the broken piece of the cup, and holds on tight. His chest starts with an unknown pain. The ceiling remains white, startlingly bland and still.  
  


*

Potter comes again on the last day of this joke of a sentence. Potter looks just as possessed, just as weary. The guard has retreated on behalf of Harry Potter, though that boy should have been fired right away for the way he keeps glancing at Potter like a gaping fish, flushing under the hero’s gaze. 

‘You are coming to Hogwarts next week. The first-years are finally going home for the summer. McGonagall calmed them down,’ says Potter after the guard leaves with that awed expression, star-struck and dazed. ‘You’ll be coming with me,’ Potter continues, his words slurred, swallowed fast, stumbling one after another. ‘To help—er. To rebuild the castle.’

Draco takes in his Muggle clothes: the rumpled shirt; his image reflecting in dull yet startlingly brilliant eyes. ‘I don’t understand.’

Potter blinks. ‘What?’

‘Why?’

Potter frowns. 

Draco grasps the shard. ‘Will I be returning as a student or as a war criminal?’

Potter’s eyes are shining feverishly, then dimming, then alive again; Draco doubts he actually sees him. Potter runs a hand through his hair, says too quickly, ‘both. I will keep an eye on you. That was the condition they agreed to for not choosing the alternative.’

‘Azkaban,’ states Draco matter-of-factly. ‘You saved me twice and counting.’ 

‘Er,‘ Potter says. 

‘And you will be supervising me for my adamantly relaxed stay at Hogwarts?’

‘We don’t have any other choice.’ 

‘Everyone who doesn’t want me rot in Azkaban is stupid,’ Draco says. ‘Are you stupid, Potter?’ 

‘Er,’ Potter repeats. He looks like a child; he looks like the oldest man that ever lived. 

‘You are a child,’ Draco decides. 

Potter’s muscle beneath his jaw twitches. Finally, his eyes are clear. He looks irritable enough to take a fight. 

And for a time there really is a hope of returning to the old ways, to give over to threats that grit and bleed exactly like they should— but Draco opens his mouth and nothing comes out. The shard has made his finger bleed. 

‘You can’t expect me to comply,’ Draco says, but Potter isn’t listening. ‘You can’t save everyone. I doubt you’d know what to save from me, anyhow.’ 

‘No,’ Potter lets out. ‘No— I know that.’ He says, then shuts his eyes tightly. Draco feels the broken shard in his hand prickling his skin. 

‘You shouldn’t come here,’ Draco says. ‘The war is over.’

Potter grunts. Draco’s chest seizes suddenly, clawing at the flesh. Magic remembers; it curls around his bones and expands whole. ‘They told me that I have saved the day,’ Potter says. ‘I did, I suppose.’ Potter fidgets in his pocket. ‘I have,’ he says, with more conviction this time.

‘You have,’ says Draco. ‘What do you want next? Live forever?’

Potter looks blankly, his eyes straying on the white wall behind. Potter’s hand stills in his pocket. Draco’s chest contracts, crushing the ribcage. ‘I’ve been told not to dwell on dreams,’ he says.

Draco moves his skin against the shard. It is going to leave a bloody fingerprint, he thinks worryingly. ‘I do,’ he says. ‘There is always Quidditch.’

Potter gives a startled laugh. His expression remains away, but there is recognition, matched with a dim, dull and unkindled flame. Potter shifts, covered with light perspiration, shivering to a cold that Draco does not feel. 

But the pain grows, vine-like, expanding at the area of his chest, cracking the vertebrae. And that, he feels, is like cleansing. 

‘Thought you mustn’t tell lies, Potter.’

‘No,’ Potter says, looking annoyed, ‘you are the one that did.’

Potter’s scar echoes brightly across dark skin. _I must not tell lies_. The letters, scrawled easily across the hand, seem to shudder at the red edges of flipped skin. 

‘It’s nothing,’ Potter says when he sees him stare, covering his scar with his other hand. Magic growls; it seeps through pain of his own. 

‘It’s Dark,’ Draco reminds him. ‘It shouldn’t manifest. It might be a curse.’

The world shifts easily when they choose to stand. Potter follows Kenneth to guide him out of the door. He looks haunted; he looks the same in his stories. The only thing Draco doesn’t get to invent is Harry Potter and all that follows; hatred, laughter; a hand curling around a Remembrall, shouts to the winds. He wonders if Potter will come and get it. He wonders if he will tell him to come and get it. He wonders if they will get detentions. The walls are closed, and there are no windows. The white closes in. 

‘I will come at ten,’ Potter’s voice echoes in the room, where in the dank air he perceives. Magic is lingering. ‘I will probably be late. Wait up.’

The shelf in the white room is brown; a remarkable colour in a colourless space. Draco places the shards one by one, aligns them perfectly still. The patterns are broken blue circles; Draco stares up at the white ceiling for the night with one between his thumbs. 

* 

They meet at Madam Malkin’s, Harry Potter hand-in-hand with James Potter’s sour face, a picture that Draco has seen in the _Daily_ _Prophet_ : James and Lily Potter, killing the Dark Lord with the sheer power of love. Draco was five when he hears it from his father. The dinner table is not for discussions for unfavourable people, Father states indignantly, and the Potters were the Undesirables number one, two, and three, though the third one is rarely mentioned in the papers at all.

Harry Potter stays in the shadow with the parents’ conscious effort. A small, but well-endowed child, Harry Potter can be seen trotting behind a toy Snitch at the Potters’ garden. If lucky, the tabloids manage to snap a few pictures of Harry Potter with his godfather Sirius Black. One-time Draco manages to glimpse at Father’s morning papers who featured an animated picture of Potter and Black stretching their tongues out, laughing madly until the picture plays and replays again. Father has thrown that day’s paper out, but Draco snatches it and has kept it hidden underneath his pillow. When his room’s windows spill sliver at night, Draco will look at it through the pale light; the feeling of forbiddingness arises in his chest unbidden.

At the door of Madam Malkin’s shop, Lucius comments on the boy’s outfit. _Pitiful_ , Lucius tuts. A fight is imminent, but Harry Potter simply grins, looking thrilled at the prospect of chaos. The wind feels as real as the hooting of his owl in his cage; a white feather falls to the ground unnoticed.

James Potter has his wand out. His son peeks at Draco with a curious eye. 

‘You’re the wrong sort,’ says Harry, his dark face a picture of innocent wonder. ‘Are you?’

The light is blinding. Contrary to the dark alleyways where he dreams and the white room where he thinks, natural daylight is sickening. It burns him at the level of his chest; it doesn’t let go. Draco prefers stories much more than dreams.

Lucius Malfoy mutters a spell under his breath, his hand stilling in his cloak. The universe shifts and tilts upwards. The world disappears and everything is white, fluttering thin gold. A single vision of a tunnel, narrowing at the edges. Come, a voice says.

James Potter meets him at the end of the tunnel, wand shaking sparks. 

‘Harry,’ says James, his eyes boring into his. ‘You must stop this. You must not come back.’

‘I am not him,’ says Draco, stepping back. 

‘I can’t have you back in here, do you understand me, Harry? You need to stop coming back,’ James’ voice breaks, teetering on the verge of tears. 

Draco stares down at his hand; dark and calloused at the pads of his thumbs. _I must not tell lies_ ; it tells him. Potter looks a lot like his father, Draco realizes when he touches the ridges of the glasses on his face.

‘Harry,’ James pleads. His hand comes down on Draco’s head. On Potter’s black-jet hair.

‘I am not him,’ Draco insists. James now has his hand on his shoulder, keeping him from struggling.

‘Stop it,’ he says, staggering. ‘Let go of me!’

‘Harry,’ James says, raising his wand soundlessly, at the level of his head. Potter’s head. ‘You have been brave. We have been proud.’

Red sparks fly up with a flick of a wand, then everything goes.

‘Until the end,’ comes James Potter’s voice, soft like a dream. ‘I’ll meet you there.’

Draco claws at his chest when he starts from the bed. He sits uptight, scrambling for breath. It is morning in a windowless white room. When he looks down, the neat scar across his chest is bright and pale, shining in alarm.

It is ten, he checks. Potter has not yet arrived; Draco waits up, his hand grasping thin white sheets, and another on the scar below the collar, white and blinding, as if lightning has struck. 

*

The Hogwarts Express trotted with its usual cheer, summer tagging along the grey clouds of smoke rushing through the rails. Swarms of children hop from the exit, huddled together, unafraid of the summer air. First-year students stayed two more weeks in Hogwarts and are now ready to come home. Children rush frantically to their parents, barely bidding goodbye to their friends. Some children are hugging, most of them crying. When the departing cry of the Express rang, the King’s Cross is empty. The war is over; only thoughts linger aboard. 

Amidst the empty compartments there echoes a silent humming. Quiet but buzzing with energy, Luna Lovegood has her legs swerving back and forth with both hands on her knees.

‘I don’t think anyone is happy to see you, which is a shame,’ she remarks eerily. Draco Malfoy, who is sitting cross-legged at the adjacent seat, has his head turned to the window. ‘They all think you cursed Harry.’

Draco’s mouth curls in distaste. ‘Best accuse me of backstabbing. My minister-appointed wand can only do _Reparo_ and the kind,’ he says. ‘I have not seen him. He was supposed to escort me back to the rotten castle I helped destroy.’

It is the Hufflepuff guard that bought him hands-bound to the King’s Cross with a scowl, looking curiously like a first-year Draco. He received bloody nose for the comment.

‘I hope Harry Potter finishes you,’ the boy gritted out furiously as he untied his hand and shoved him a long, oddly-shaped wand. ‘He’ll see reason soon.’

Lovegood explains, ‘Harry is ill. Hermione found him unconscious at his house. They were worried when Harry didn’t come to join them,’ he hears her say. ‘Poor Harry. He looked even worse than usual.’

Draco squints at the sun through the window. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I like summer,’ Luna says dreamily. ‘The Nargles sometimes dance along the Hogwarts ditch when it is warm.’

Draco stands up. He is about to leave when Luna says, ‘There are so much people in there. Harry needs space. Only Hermione knows.’ When Draco turns to stare at her, she says, ‘I am glad you came back, Draco.’

Draco goes out. He closes the door with his eyes trailing on the spilling sun. He walks down the narrow train line, every empty compartment a jarring sight. The humming of the train continues uninterrupted, even when Draco hears voices from the room at his left.

‘—said I am fine—’

‘— Harry—’

‘— the war is over—’

‘— people that are fine don’t faint—'

‘— not normal behaviour, Harry—’

‘— wonder why. I also can’t sleep, maybe you have a theory for that too—'

‘Harry, please!’

Draco steps aside just as Potter opens the door, looking faint and exactly the worst kind of awful as Lovegood dictated. ‘Ah,’ says Potter, seeing him. He has likely forgotten him. Potter closes the door, careful to shield Draco from his friends’ view.

‘What happened to your nose?’ He asks.

Draco shrugs. ‘Compensation for being right.’

Potter waits for him to move; the line is too narrow for them to walk side by side. Draco leads the way, his back to him. Potter can kill him now, Draco thinks. He can kill anyone he wants; surely the Ministry will help him hide the body.

They sit down in an empty compartment, far away from Granger and Weasley. Other voices are muffled by the distance. Draco recognized Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom’s voice chatting aimlessly about the weather.

‘I’m supposed to keep an eye on you,’ Potter murmurs, his hand in his cloak, fidgeting restlessly. ‘Shacklebolt made me promise.’

Potter’s sleeves are rid up; his forearms exposed. A small tattoo of a Snitch runs across the dark skin, the tip of the wings fluttering, then disappearing from away sight a moment later. ‘A gift,’ Potter explains. ‘Magical tattoo.’

‘You have my wand; I have a toy wood-stick from the Ministry,’ says Draco. ‘I’m harmless. You can kill me.’

Potter smiles feebly, an edge of sharp teeth showing through. ‘I don’t care.’

The train rushes silently past the whispers. There is nothing in between the red, uncomfortable cushions that they are sitting on outside of casual antagonism; deliberate words. Draco sets his eyes on the road, the sky; he hears the shallow breaths coming out of Potter, deep heaves from the ribcage, threatening to break free. Draco is reminded of the bird in the Vanishing Cabinet, spasming in pain; the feather blowing softly between his fingers.

Draco has missed this. He misses the silence. Not the silence at home, where the Dark lurks and the Dark listens; not in the white room, where the Light oppresses and the Light breaks. Draco misses silence with another where one understands, and Potter, with his pained gasps and silent pains, understands more than anyone he could have hoped for.

‘It’s like trying to catch air,’ Potter says, his breath blurring the window. He stares at his forearms, perhaps wondering about the Snitch. 

‘You did it in first year. You caught the Remembrall.’

There is a rueful little smile on the corner of Potter’s mouth. ‘I did, didn’t I? Always here to save the day.’

‘You could’ve fallen off your broom and died,’ says Draco. ‘You are willing to die for everything.’

A surge of magic colours the cubicle. ‘People _have_ died. Things have changed.’

‘You haven’t.’

‘I have,’ Potter insists.

‘I haven’t, then,’ says Draco.

Potter’s face melts; the harsh, taunt edges suddenly gone, replaced with the rounded edge of relief. ‘No,’ he says, looking amazed at his own words. ‘No, you haven’t. You are the only thing that I know in this world that hasn’t changed a single bit.’

Draco settles in his seat. He closes his eyes. The dream of a hand on his head, gentle and kind; the image of James Potter with his son at Madam Malkin’s, wand out. Red sparks. James Potter evicting his son out, his voice soft and pleading. _You shouldn’t come back_ , it said. His hand on his hair. _We have been proud._

The window emits a pitiful sound; there is a crack at the bottom of the sill. Draco’s chest sears again.

 _Fire_ , is the word that crosses Draco’s mind when it happens. The window bursts open; shards exploding over to the red cushions; wind has stormed through from the ever-expanding crack of the window with footsteps heard all over the place. Harry Potter clutches his hand, gritting in a sort of pain that is raw and unrestrained; his scar flashes brightly, the light seeping through the hand underneath another; Draco’s chest starts to ache. Potter collapses with a cry. The air is intense, pressured into an unyielding hold. It is impossible to breathe.

‘Harry!’ comes after the quickening of footsteps. Potter lies unconscious on the seat, his hair tousled by the aggressive wind. 

Ginny Weasley is pointing her wand at Draco, flushed with the same colour as her hair. ‘You cursed him,’ she accuses, but falters when Draco staggers to the ground. ‘Malfoy, what did you do to him? You— what is going on with _you_?’

Draco’s clothes have failed to hide it; underneath the shirt is a wide scar, clean and neatly slashed across his chest, white and painstakingly bright.

*

The infirmary has the same stench from third-year, when Draco was wrongfully attacked by a Hippogriff as he rightfully accused the dreadful creature of being an ugly, good-for-nothing monster. The smell is familiar enough, though what is emphatically not is a crowd of Gryffindors staring exactly as if he was the aforementioned ugly, good-for-nothing monster.

Draco barely manages to sit on the bed when someone grabs him by the shoulders.

‘Harry says that you’re not to blame,’ says Ginny Weasley fiercely, her grip crushing. She is not pulling out her wand, but she might as well. ‘Something is wrong with you. I know it, Malfoy.’

‘Something’s wrong with _Potter_ ,’ Draco drawls. ‘He’s dying, and no one’s is gathered anxiously around his little bed and coo him to sleep, is it?’

Her face sours, but she recovers quickly. ‘Hermione’s with him,’ Weasley grumbles. ‘He was tired of us running after him.’

Draco looks past the flaming red hair and sees Neville Longbottom cringing lightly at the words. Luna Lovegood is perched on his bed, her crossed legs sporting mismatched socks. Ron Weasley, however, has his fist twisted on Draco’s shirt. He has pushed past his sister, his eyes comically large, growling dangerously.

‘Weasley,’ greets Draco amiably. ‘Pleasure seeing you here. Where is your friend Harry? I heard he was dreadfully sick. A terminal illness, I’m afraid. Did he tell you?’

‘Malfoy,’ grunts Ron Weasley. ‘Harry chooses to help you, Merlin knows why. He’s a bit mental about saving people, but I don’t want you here. None of us wants you here.’

‘I’m thrilled that Draco’s here,’ says Lovegood.

Ginny Weasley shakes her head at her brother. Weasley takes a step back, glowering still.

‘Cheer up. When Potter’s dead, you can get rid of me,’ says Draco. He closes his eyes briefly, willing himself not to fall asleep.

‘He is not dying!’ Weasley bellows, though there is a disquieting frown on his face. ‘He’s just tired, ‘s all, you slimy little—‘

‘That’s enough.’ Pair of heads turn to find Madam Pomfrey, hands on her hips, a stern look on her wrinkled face. ‘Leave Mr. Malfoy to my care. Now, it would be greatly appreciated if one of you can be useful and bring Mr. Potter back in here. I let him go under the assumption that Ms. Granger will calm him down from whatever fit he is having earlier. He is coming back immediately. I have some things to tell him personally.’

‘I will go,’ prompts Longbottom with a nervous smile.

She nods. ‘The others can come with you, of course,’ she says, glaring at Weasley in particular.

‘Yes, Madam Pomfrey,’ is the collective reply. Ginny Weasley throws one last suspicious glance at Draco when she leaves, along with Lovegood’s hearty wave. ‘See you later, Draco,’ says Lovegood with her uncanny cheer.

‘Mr. Malfoy, I believe you quite made a scene back in the train,’ Pomfrey announces as she strolls near him, her wand gesturing vaguely. ‘Your scar,’ she brandishes her wand at the level of his chest. ‘Now, I don’t remember treating this, or else I would, with scar like yours. Has it happened in school grounds?’ When Draco acquiesces, her frown deepens. The warm glow from her wand feels welcomed; Draco leans in.

‘It’s a powerful curse,’ concludes Madam Pomfrey after putting her wand back in her cloak. ‘Dark magic, Mr. Malfoy, right across your chest. A little below and it would be fatal, in fact, I’m quite surprised you survived at all. Are you aware who is the caster?’

‘No,’ says Draco.

‘I see,’ she says carefully. ‘When Mr. Potter comes back and finishes his little tantrum, I’ll need to talk to you two about your scars. From what I heard; they react in strange ways. Are you feeling any discomfort right now, Mr. Malfoy?’

‘I’d like to sleep,’ says Draco.

She draws the curtains. ‘Very well.’

‘Don’t close them,’ says Draco, his hand fisting the sheets. ‘Leave it. Please.’

She inclines her head; the wrinkles under her eyes crease as they shadow. ‘Rest well, Mr. Malfoy,’ says Madam Pomfrey gently. ‘Welcome back to Hogwarts.’

*

  
Images of Wiltshire; the greenest place in his imagination. Voices have lingered; voices have been heard. At Malfoy Manor, the peacock quivers its tail and rustles the kept grass. A snake slithers to their young that shrieks; creature that rubs their scales together, rattling, hissing dry and rasps when it plunges their teeth.

Narcissa Malfoy is a tolerant mother; Lucius Malfoy is a tolerant husband. Together the voices overlap, quick and steep sounds of walking in long hallways, the prickling of the fireplace, shuffling with gawks from old paintings across the stairs, staring and mulling over the century-old dried paint. Draco is hardly ever tolerant. He kept pestering his sixth removed grandmother, shaming her for her death through poisoning, being the alleged tester of the world’s first fire-whiskey. He has been too young to know what a fire-whiskey is; he thought it was some sort of funny beverage that turns people into nasty-looking hags.

Some voices are newer. In Wiltshire, the rustlings of trees and spewing of garden leaves by the fountain. Shrill voices of Pansy Parkinson, sometimes, when she is allowed to see him. Blaise Zabini prefers to write, but Draco has kept voices of scattered papers and the scratching of quill against parchment ink. The blistering sounds of Crabbe and Goyle running in the garden when summer hits anew.

Stories of Wiltshire are green and lingering. But when Draco sleeps, he has his cheek sided by the pillow, listening for the screams. The Dark Lord calls it a handsome manor. For a moment, Wiltshire is his, and he dreams.

Potter’s scar is bright and unblemished. Incorporeal and intangible, Potter exists in dreams as a voice, louder and clearer than anyone else’s. Draco knows, even without Madam Pomfrey or anyone else, what Harry Potter is. What they are.

‘It’s like catching air,’ Potter voice echoes. Wiltshire’s sky remains blue and cloudless, and for a moment, Draco understands that he means.

*

  
Potter is leaning on Granger when they step into the hospital wing. A heavy foot he settles opposite Draco, breathing erratically, sweat thinning on his brows. Draco is wide-awake, threading his hands on the white sheets. Potter puts up his hand as Pomfrey comes closer.

‘I know what’s wrong with me,’ mutters Potter darkly. ‘No offence, but I just want to sleep.’

Hermione Granger presses her head against the crook of Potter’s shoulder. Draco hears a distant, resolved sobbing, curls bouncing as she shakes. Potter has his arms around her, his head numbly resting against her hair with his eyes closed.

‘Ms. Granger, whoever helpful your presence is for Mr. Potter, I must ask you to leave,’ says Pomfrey kindly. ‘Mr. Potter has exhausted himself quite thoroughly and sleep could do you some well too, by the looks of it. The staff has reopened the Tower for you seven this summer.’

Granger lifts her teary face; her glance turns to Draco briefly. ‘All of us in the Gryffindor Tower…then what about the other students? Those who stay at Hogwarts…’

Children who are underaged and who desired to stay at Hogwarts are granted permission to stay this year. Young Draco would’ve a field day humiliating the kids.

‘They will have other accommodations,’ says Pomfrey. ‘There’s no need to worry, Ms. Granger.’

‘I will be alright, Hermione,’ Potter reassures her, his hand covering hers. ‘I reckon Malfoy will be stupid enough to attack me in front of Madam Pomfrey.’

‘Don’t tempt me, Potter,’ says Draco.

But Granger doesn’t seem worried about that. Her dark face is flushed with undried tears when she turns to Draco. Her lips move, and she stalks away hurriedly, as if afraid that her words will be caught by the wind.

‘Did she say anything?’ Potter asks curiously.

 _Help him,_ she has said, her brown eyes boring into his _._

Madam Pomfrey shakes her head, her hand coming up rest on Potter’s scarred skin. ‘Now, Mr. Potter. You claim to know what is wrong with you. Care to enlighten us?’

Potter pretends to think. ‘No, not particularly,’ he says.

‘This concerns Mr. Malfoy as well,’ says Pomfrey.

*

Neville Longbottom wishes Potter well. Weasley is speaking to him with a hurried, hushed tone. They leave, shoving long, worried glances at Potter since the train incident.

‘The walls suggest me that your little house friends are murderers,’ says Draco, taking in the red decorations in the Gryffindor Tower. ‘A killing sight, at least. So this is what gave you the poor eyesight; exposure to Gryffindor red.’

‘Living in the dungeon froze your bits off. Is that why you turned out to be such a coward?’ Potter retorts without heat, dropping his bag unceremoniously on his trunk. ‘Stop complaining. It’s better than a lot of places I can think of right now.’

‘Azkaban,’ quips Draco, ‘is infinitely more welcomed. No one would want to talk with me there.’

The dorms are coloured red and dusted gold. Draco dislikes the warmth that seems to radiate from the walls, usually comforted by the lithe coldness in the dungeon. Potter’s hand trembles as he spreads his sheets and hops on them. He is wearing mismatched socks, one a horrid red, the other stitched with golden Snitches. The flash of a pale twist of wings appears just below the ankle, then disappears promptly beneath the black trousers.

‘I didn’t send Ron and Neville away to fight with you, Malfoy.’

‘Your imminent death is not news for them, Potter.’

‘God knows if you will murder me in my sleep. Ron’s worried; he wouldn’t volunteer to be in the same room with you, you know that.’ Sitting opposite of him with a deliberate smile, Potter lifts the back of his hand, pointing a finger to the words, carved deep in, the skin out; _I must not tell lies_. ‘I have them too, y’know,’ says Potter slowly. ‘The dreams.’

‘Granger told you all about it, didn’t she? You didn’t look nearly as surprised when Pomfrey diagnosed us,’ says Draco, remembering the look on Potter’s face. ‘Physical aches, some stupid light from our scars. Potential Dark affinities. Even occasional dream sharing; charming little thing. Accidental bond that explains everything except for the fact that you’re dying, Potter.’

‘I am,’ Potter says. ‘Dying, I mean.’

‘I’d say you couldn’t live past this summer,’ Draco scoffs.

Potter looks at him, a smile blooming on his face. ‘Want to bet, Malfoy?’

Draco looks up. ‘On what?’

‘My life,’ Potter says.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! ♥


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